just a boy
by demonreach
Summary: the good always die young. -youngster joey


Your name is Joey. You are but a boy.

Tiny, knock-kneed, you had stammered your way through primary school; just the scrawny kid with the buckteeth who sweated too much, scorned by your classmates and Mr. Peverell. You were the butt of everyone's jokes; _rat face, _they jeered as they drove their feet into your ribs and tore the breath right out of your throat. _Ugly rat face._

"The thing is, Joey," Mr. Peverell had told you, as you trembled over the ugly 'F' scrawled on your latest mathematics exam, hands steepled in that kindly teacher way which was anything but kindly at the moment, "there are just some people who do not make it far in life. Getting to the finish line is hard work, son. I just don't think you got what it takes to make the cut."

"I can work harder," you stammered, working desperately to cover your hideous stutter. "I can get stronger."

"Joey-" And you had not failed to notice the way his lips moved, twisting around the familiar slur that the other kids called you, _rat face _indeed with your thin mouth and your atrocious underbite. "-look at this. Look at me."

He held up his left hand, bearing three stumps for fingers and burn marks which had yet to fade, even with twenty years worth of time since the accident had occurred. His eyes were full of pity. "This is what happens in the wild when you aren't careful. It's a big world beyond Pallet Town." He let you run your fingers over the angry patchwork of damaged skin, the nerves that would never quite operate like they used to, the places where flesh and bone had once been ripped away in a careless second of indecision.

"You got guts, Joe. But you'll need more than that to survive."

* * *

The letter was both a blessing and a curse.

They sent them to every household with a child of age, in every city and township. An unmistakable crisp, red envelope lay waiting on the kitchen table, and that night, you had wolfed down the words written on the paper as surely as you wolfed down your Gramma's ham and grits, handling the note with something like reverence.

You signed up the day after. In your neatest handwriting, you wrote on the dotted lines: "MY NAME IS - Joey Blanchett. I AM - 10 YEARS OLD. I AM - Male." Over and over, copying each word with the utmost care, choking on the need, the rawness of your want to fill out the slip, cut where designated, and send it off to the post office to have it checked and returned by the League, miles away. Your dreams were good, untroubled even by the sounds of Gramma's hacking coughs downstairs, the growls and yips of feasting creatures beyond the town's borders.

And on the day it came back, the flourish of Lance's signature at the bottom, you could have cried in joy.

You are retarded, but you are not stupid. You know what the letter entails, what acceptance requires. "IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED APPROVAL FROM CHAMPION LANCE, PLEASE REPORT TO OAK LABORATORY BY 10:30 AM, JUNE 16, TO RECEIVE YOUR OFFICIAL TRAINER'S LICENSE AND A COMPLIMENTARY POKEDEX V.05." Yes, you even know what you will do in that darkly lit room, a circle of Professors watching your every movement, testing your every reaction as you are given three choices, one of which will accompany you as you take your first step into the forbidden stretches of the grass.

Perhaps you are naive, because you are not afraid as you stroll through the white aisles unhurriedly, fishing a single Pokeball from the table and tossing it into the air with the practiced grace of a professional, watching as a pink-furred Rattata bursts from that spray of light and sniffs at your leg. They are silent as you pat it clumsily and name it Sylvester, and they are smiling even less when they hand you your Pokedex.

"Fight well," Oak tells your class. "Fight strong."

_You will all mostly likely die_, he does not say. _From starvation, disease, mauling - you are only children._

But aren't you listening more keenly than the rest? You are smiling as they lead you away. You are smiling as you wrap your arms around Gramma's neck one last time, an embrace she responds to by pitching a fit, and as the man from the League hands her your Trainer's Insurance, she weeps and crumples the check, pressing it against her wrinkled chest, screaming your name in her rasping voice as you are escorted outside, the gate where Pallet borders the wilderness.

"Good luck," says the attendant.

"Luck is only for the weak," you reply, and with Sylvester clutched to your neck, you begin walking.

* * *

You are but a boy, another bland face in a sea of millions. They will not notice one child, nor ten, nor fifty, nor a thousand. The region has wars of its own to fight; there is little love lost for the death of a child who willingly embarks upon the path of a Trainer.

Sylvester sets upon the first of your bullies with ferocious ease. He makes a mistake, going for your Pokemon and engaging you in traditional combat; you are a rat, vermin, the lowest of the low. You are anything but orthodox.

When your beast has feasted enough on his flesh, you kill his starter, a Bulbasaur, and salt the scraps with a sprinkling of preservatives from your kit. Then you and Sylvester eat.

However, you are still young, and you are still Joey the rat-face, and you are everything they do not want you to be. Summer fades into autumn and you start to shiver. You have blisters all under your feet, your toes are cracked and oozing, your lips chapped and bloody. A gauntness settles on the both of you, an ache that goes bone-deep and tunnels into the marrow, festering like a boil.

Your prey are all small fry, children with whom you can compete with and win. They are girls and boys not yet grown out of the awkwardness you learned long ago to master, and so they fall. Even their cash is not enough to buy you a room at the Center, so you sleep by the garbage piles. Sometimes you root through them, searching for scraps. It dawns on you that you really have become a rodent.

By the time spring comes, it will be too late. You are dead, you are dying, and when you close your eyes and do not wake up, the Trainer's Insurance will finally activate and Gramma will receive a meager solace before she dies, as well. The thought gives you warmth, a strange exultation that seems to drive away the worst of the cold, rendering it a dull throb at the base of your skull.

Many times, you contemplate ending your journey prematurely, but you are determined to prove Mr. Peverell and the dissenters wrong, so you forge ahead through snow and sleet and each time, that chill fills a little more of your blood, till you are frozen from the inside out.

* * *

You are trapped in a cave, alone and hungry, when you finally give up.

Hemmed in from all sides by snarling Zubat, your poor Sylvester bleeding from dozens of punctures made with the bats' needle teeth, you collapse against the rock wall and brush his matted fur. He gives a series of bleats, painful, mourning calls for you to hold him as he dies. What little heat you can still spare is poured into him, every last ounce of it. Gently, you rock him in your arms, holding him like a baby. Both of you rats, both of you scrappers - until now.

"Gonna make us champions one day," you tell him, teeth chattering, forcing your frigid mouth into the semblance of a smile. "Gonna make us rich, you hear that, Syl? Nothing but the best for us, here on out. All the food we could ever eat, all the houses we could want to live in, nothing but the best for you, bud. You're Top Rat. You're in the top percent of Rattata, you're the best thing they could wish for, don't you ever doubt it."

He runs his rough tongue over your knuckles, drawing a laugh from you. It feels foreign, after so many months devoid of hearing it that you thought you had forgotten how to feel happy.

You cradle the corpse of your Pokemon until the very last. You can feel hometown memories surfacing, like bubbles in soda. Gramma, the comfort of your own bed, petting Sylvester and giggling as he rubbed against your cheeks and made your spine tingle, these are what you recall as the rest of your senses are overwhelmed by thousands of fangs tearing into your skin, making your eyes water and your pupils dilate.

You have won.


End file.
